Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) expressed concern over increasing number of missing people at different places of the country. According to Family members, law enforcing agencies had allegedly detained 20 people in last two and a half months but denied their involvement in this regard.

According to ASK Documentation based on media reports, family members of  victims stated that members of law enforcing agencies had detained 20 people in plainclothes across the country between January and 16 March 2015. It has also been reported that whereabouts of those missing people could not be found and law enforcing agencies had not admitted any link. ASK expresses utmost concern that most of the missing peoples were involved in opposition politics and BNP Joint Secretary General Salauddin Ahmed, who had been missing for 13 days, was one of them.

It is further stated by the law enforcers or responsible persons in government were shrugging off their responsibility by claiming that they had not detained them. But it is the duty of law enforcing agencies and government to find out any missing person and cannot avoid responsibility by mere saying that they had not picked up missing people.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had sent a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs earlier, asking it to instruct the law enforcing agencies not to detain anybody in plainclothes.

We think that the Commission should follow up whether its recommendations were being implemented by the Government. It is “evident” from the ongoing situation that the commission’s recommendation was not executed.

We want to remind the government that it is their constitutional duty to ensure safety of every citizen. A person being missing and nobody getting his or her whereabouts is the grave violation of human rights. We urge the government to play the highest level of responsibility in trying to find missing persons as well as to give acceptable interpretations regarding face-finding into these incidents.